This gritty 3-disc miniseries chronicles the first 40 days of the Iraq war from the perspective of the Marines' First Recon Battalion. As the soldiers journey into Baghdad, it was impossible for them to anticipate what would occur during those first befuddling days as they struggled with shoddy supplies, and were frustrated by the chain of command and questioning the mission at every turn. Based on Evan Wright's best-selling book and produced by David Simon and Ed Burns, this has become an acclaimed seven-part miniseries from HBO Films.

This is a very well-detailed, pseudo-documentary styled series that captures a lot of emotional aspects of combat as it affects a small elite recon unit of Marines in the Second Gulf War. There were some very realistic sections that were done well.

The aspects that really nag at me are the liberal overtones and reversion to blatant stereotyping that unfairly portray the Marine Corps troops as nothing more than aberrant or misled youths being ordered around willy-nilly by a tactically challenged chain of command.

Stereotypes include the "baby killer" who wants to shoot anything that moves, "the racist" who spouts the usual litany of white supremacist drivel, the "zero-sum" semi-communist who sees every adversity as a consequence of "The Man". And of course there's the Rolling Stones reporter who perpetuates the false idea that the whole war was predicated on Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction, regardless of the fact that the press and democrats had beaten that war drum for nearly a decade prior to this second initiation of hostilities with an almost religious conviction. The brilliant vehicle for his acceptance by the troops (being lampooned initially as a left-wing writer) is the off-hand comment he makes in his casual introduction to the unit that he used to be a writer for "Hustler".

You may very well enjoy this series. I did. However, a 12 year old could have come up with the liberally slanted formula that permeates the story line. Unfortunately, the sacrifice and real life heroism of a critically important and under-appreciated segment of our society is not portrayed accurately or honorably in this series. Members of our military deserve better. This series fails in that aspect.

There is some good acting and decently detailed depictions of military conditions. Unfortunately, with the literary and cinematic palette available to this American story of war, we have a politically bent finger-painting. The only thing that saves it from complete awfulness are the sporadic hair-raising battles and the touches of genuine humanity displayed incidental to the underlying agenda that is clumsily shoved in the viewer's face.

I gave the series to an Iraqi veteran who is young enough to possibly overlook the not-so-hidden agenda of the writer.

To those who defend our Country, Thank You For Your Service, and God Bless.

This series was the best overall series Ive seen since Band of Brothers. Funny, dramatic, great battle scenes, and the people in it arent fakes, they are folks from the real time so acting was easier in terms of the knowledge of etiquette, and behaviors of the people of this generation.

The series took me by surprise and left me with increased respect and admiration for our modern warriors. Remarkable production values; a real you-are-there feeling; wonderful actors; comedy and tragedy. I'm an aging female, and my 90-year-old mother and I both were mesmerized by this series. We've seen some episodes twice, and it just gets better in the repeats. David Simon and crew have done it again. Great, great series. Thanks, HBO!

Read the book multiple times and I love it more and more each time, this series could be the "Band of Brothers" of the Iraq conflict. Defiantly pick this up if you want an accurate, 100% based off real events series. As an enlisted Marine, 10 oorahs out of 10.

Accurate depiction from an enlisted Marines point of view. Awesome movie about Marines doing a job no one else has the balls to do!The only bad thing about this movie is that it makes me wish I was still in the Corps and still in Iraq!